by Jance, J. A.
“It’s about your computer,” Chris said.
Ali was so relieved, she almost laughed aloud. “My computer,” she repeated. “What about it?”
“When you didn’t show up at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s for dinner last night, we came back here looking for you. Later on in the evening when you still weren’t back, I started thinking about that stalker who came after you last year. I wondered if maybe there was something on your computer that would let us know what had happened or where you had gone. So I logged on to your computer and read your files.”
“Chris,” Ali said. “That’s no big deal. I don’t know why you’re so upset. It’s not like what I do on my computer is top secret or anything.”
“We saw the video,” Athena said. “The video with Dave Holman’s daughter.”
“Oh,” Ali said. “Oh, that.” Maybe there are some secrets on my computer after all. “Did you tell Dave?”
“That’s the thing, Ms. Reynolds,” Athena said. “From what Mr. Holman had said at dinner, it was clear he had no idea about any of this. Unless you told him. Did you?”
“Please call me Ali,” she reminded Athena. “But no, I didn’t tell him either. I didn’t want to show it to him until I could figure out what to say.”
“We know who it is,” Chris said.
Ali was stunned. “You do?” she asked. “How’s that possible?”
“His name is on the video,” Athena answered. “We saw it.”
“I saw the video,” Ali said. “There wasn’t any name.”
“Show her,” Athena said.
“I’ll go get my computer,” Chris said. He brought it from the bedroom, set it up on the dining room table, and turned it on. Once it booted up, he logged on and then clicked on a link as Ali and Athena gathered around the table to watch. Moments later the disgusting video began playing on the screen. “Look behind them,” Chris said. “On the wall.”
It was difficult to ignore what was going on with Crystal and the man, but Ali did as she was told. “It looks like a piece of artwork,” Ali said. “Something in a frame.”
“Right,” Chris said. “Now look at this.” He clicked over to another file that showed a single frame from the video and then clicked on that image several times in rapid succession. With each click, what was happening in the foreground slipped further out of focus while the background became clearer and clearer. It reminded Ali of an optometrist doing a vision test.
“It’s a diploma of some kind,” Ali said at last.
“Exactly!” Athena said. “From a seminary in Weed, California, awarded to someone named Richard Masters.”
“When I first saw the video, I thought Crystal’s stepfather might be responsible for this awful stuff, but his name is Whitman, Gary Whitman. So, who is this guy, and how did you do this?”
“Sonja, my geeky best friend from college,” Athena explained. “She’s spent years working on an image-enhancement project. That program is now being used by law enforcement agencies all over the country to help decipher video-recorded images of license plates.”
“When we first turned this on, Athena noticed there was something on the wall in the background,” Chris continued. “We e-mailed this frame to Sonja. You’re seeing what she sent back.”
“Amazing,” Ali said.
“And through the magic of the Internet,” Athena added, “we can now tell you that Pastor Richard Masters is the youth minister for a small congregation of disaffected ex-Baptists called Back Door Apostles who operate out of a very modest strip mall in North Las Vegas. That’s where Crystal’s family lives, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ali said. “In a trailer park somewhere in North Las Vegas.”
“And if Crystal was having difficulty adjusting to her new school situation,” Athena said, “what are the chances that her family sent her to this jerk for counseling? My family moved twice when I was in junior high,” she added. “It was hell. My mother sent me to a counselor, too. A good one though, not a creep like this.”
“So, what do we do?” Chris asked. “Call Dave? Have him come take a look at this?”
Ali turned away from the computer screen, walked over to the counter, and poured herself a cup of coffee while she searched for an answer to those questions.
Dave had already admitted to Ali that he didn’t necessarily have good sense when it came to dealing with Roxanne and her second husband. She seemed to remember his even making a threat of some kind toward Gary Whitman. That was one of the reasons Richey hadn’t wanted him to come to Vegas when Crystal first disappeared. Now Ali worried that if Dave saw what she had seen on the video it would send the man completely around the bend.
“I’m going to go shower,” she said. “That’s where I do some of my best thinking. When I come out, we’ll figure out what to do.”
With hot water cascading over her tired body, Ali tried to imagine the best way to proceed. She knew without question that if they showed the images to Dave, he’d be on his way to Vegas in a matter of minutes—pissed as hell and armed to the teeth. If he charged into the good pastor’s office and raised Cain about it, ordinary people would see him as a justifiably outraged father doing what fathers do. A defense attorney, on the other hand, would see him as an out-of-control police officer and would claim that any evidence resulting from Dave’s actions, damning though it might be, would nonetheless be ruled inadmissable.
Ali knew someone needed to beard Richard Masters in his den, but Dave Holman was exactly the wrong person for the job.
Ali emerged from the shower and dressed. She returned to the kitchen, where Chris was just finishing frying bacon and eggs and Athena was setting the table. “You said you wanted to do some thinking, so we’re having protein with our sweet rolls.”
“Well?” Athena asked.
“How would the two of you like to take a day trip up to Vegas?”
“Cool,” Athena said. “Sounds like fun.”
“Great,” Chris said. “Athena’s never ridden in a Porsche.”
“There’s one problem,” Ali said. “Since I don’t have my driver’s license back, one of you will have to drive.”
Chris burst out laughing. “We’ll manage,” he said.
As they prepared to leave for Vegas, Ali was waylaid for twenty minutes while she searched for the scrap of paper—the back of a gas station receipt actually—on which she had jotted Crystal’s cell phone number all those nights earlier. If she’d had her cell phone, it would have been simple to look up the information in her call history. And she could, she supposed, call Detective Marsh and have him look it up for her, but doing that would put her at risk of having to endure another “insert” lecture. Since she was obviously doing it again—not minding her own business—she didn’t want to hear it. She was thrilled when she finally found the missing note in the bottom of her bathroom trash can.
But even though she had the number, she didn’t want to call it. She didn’t want to talk to Crystal until she was good and ready—until she and Chris and Athena had all their ducks in a row.
While Ali searched for the missing phone number, Chris downloaded the video and the file of photo enhancements onto a CD. Well after noon when they finally set out, Chris was at the wheel of the Cayenne and Athena rode shotgun. Ali, sitting in the backseat, mostly wanted to close her eyes and doze, but Chris had other ideas.
“Okay, Mom,” he said. “It’s a long drive from here to there. I want you to tell us about last night. All of it.”
“It’s not just last night,” Ali said. Over the course of the next hour or so, Ali told Chris and Athena about her dealings with Arabella Ashcroft and how what had happened to her as a child led inevitably to what was going on with Crystal Holman. Athena got it with no problem.
“After Arabella’s brother molested Arabella and when nobody believed her, she ended up taking the law into her own hands, and that screwed up her entire life.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Ali agreed. “And that’s why we
’re going to Vegas.”
“To take the law into our own hands?” Chris asked.
“No, silly,” Athena said. “To make sure Crystal doesn’t take it into hers and wreck her life, and to make sure Dave Holman doesn’t, either.”
“Oh,” Chris said.
Yes, Ali thought. This girl is growing on me by the minute.
“So what’s the plan?” Athena asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Once we’re there, I’ll talk to Crystal. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make her see that she needs to go to the cops and turn this dirtbag in. I’m worried about calling her in advance because I don’t want to give her a lot of time to think it over. She took off more than once already this week, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she did it again.”
“What about this?” Chris said. “Don’t give Crystal any advance warning at all. Why don’t we bring the cops to her instead of having her go to them?”
“That might work,” Ali said. “But the cops are another problem. What if they give us the runaround? The diploma on the wall is the one piece of solid evidence we have that ties Richard Masters to all this. But what if he tumbles to what’s happening and while we’re trying to convince the cops to get a search warrant and move on him, he takes off or has brains enough to ditch the diploma? I wish there was some way of verifying that the diploma is still there.”
“How about trying for a photo op?” Athena asked brightly.
“What kind of a photo op?” Ali asked.
“We have the address of the church,” Athena said. “What say we program it into the GPS. We can stop by there and see if the good pastor happens to be in. Maybe I can talk my way into his office. If the diploma’s there, I’ll take a photo of it with my cell phone. That way we can document that it was there at some other time besides just when the video was being filmed. With any luck I might even be able to get pictures of his computer equipment.”
“That’s taking a bit of a risk, isn’t it?” Ali asked.
Athena laughed outright at that. “Riding in a Humvee in Iraq is taking a risk,” she said. “Besides, I know the type. I may be a little too old to qualify for a youth ministry, but I’m betting Pastor Masters will turn out to be one of those smarmy goody-two-shoes guys who won’t be able to see anything about me except what he thinks is a hopeless cripple. He’ll fall all over himself trying to help me.”
“As long as his help doesn’t include anything more than talking,” Chris said with a laugh. “You may be short an arm and a leg, but I’m guessing you’d still be able to clean his clock.”
Ali fell asleep shortly after that and didn’t wake up again until Chris slowed to exit the freeway. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Headed up Civic Center Drive toward North Las Vegas.”
“Time to call Crystal,” Ali said. “Let me use your phone.”
Chris passed his to the backseat. “When are you going to get your own phone back?”
“Good question,” Ali said.
She put in Crystal’s number, pressed SEND, and was dismayed when a male voice answered.
“Is Crystal there?” Ali asked.
“She’s busy. Who’s asking?”
Ali wasn’t eager to reveal her name. “A friend of hers,” she said.
“Oh, yeah? Call back when you have a name.” With that the man hung up.
Ali pressed REDIAL.
“Do you have a name now?” the same voice asked. He sounded surly and argumentative.
“My name is Alison Reynolds,” Ali said. “I’m a friend of Crystal’s and of her dad’s.”
“Oh,” the man said. “Why didn’t you say so? This is Gary Whitman, Crystal’s stepdad. After what we’ve been through this week, no calls go through this phone without being screened first.”
A little late, Ali thought. But better than nothing.
“Can I talk to her? I’m in town and would like to see her.”
“We’re at soccer practice right now,” Whitman said. “It’ll be over in about an hour. Is Dave with you?”
“No,” Ali said. “Just my son and his girlfriend.”
“Do you want to stop by the house then?” Gary sounded relieved, as though having Dave in tow might have been a problem. “Roxie’s still at work,” he added. “She won’t be home until after five.”
Good, Ali thought. By then, maybe we’ll be ready.
“Do you have our address?” Whitman asked. “We live in Jackpot Dunes. It’s a trailer park just south of Nellis.”
“We’ll find it,” Ali said.
When they found the strip mall location of Back Door Apostles, Ali was a little surprised to see that, on a Saturday afternoon, it was a very busy place. There were several cars in the parking lot and a whole group of teens and preteens hanging around outside a door marked YOUTH MINISTRY.
When Athena started to get out of the car, Chris did, too. “We’ll both go in,” he said. “You can talk to the pastor, if he’s in. I’ll see what else is going on.”
After the better part of an hour, Chris was the first to emerge. “You wouldn’t believe it, Mom. This place is a regular kid magnet. They’ve got everything in there—a pool table, video games, computers, comics. My guess is that Masters uses the place to bring in all kinds of kids, then he finds the most vulnerable one and cuts her from the herd.”
That was Ali’s guess, too.
Athena returned to the Cayenne a few minutes later looking downright radiant. “Got him,” she said triumphantly. “Masters was called out of the room for a couple of minutes. The diploma was still there. I got several pictures of that. I also got photos of his Web-casting equipment and his computer, serial numbers included.”
“That’s my girl,” Chris said. “Where to now?”
“North Las Vegas PD,” Ali said. “We’re believers. Let’s see if we can make believers out of them.”
It was late Saturday afternoon. Josie Gutierrez and Frank Edwards, the two on-duty detectives in the Sexual Assault Unit, were both out in the field. It took some talking on Ali’s part to bring them back in to headquarters, and they weren’t particularly happy about it when they got there.
“What’s this all about?” Detective Gutierrez wanted to know.
“It’s about Crystal Holman,” Ali told them.
“The Amber Alert from this week?”
Ali nodded.
“But I heard she came home yesterday,” Detective Edwards said. “I thought everything was fine.”
Ali handed Edwards the CD Chris had made. “Take a look at these files,” she said, “then you tell us if everything’s fine.”
The two officers disappeared into the bowels of the building. A few minutes later, a grim-faced Detective Gutierrez returned. “You’d better come with me,” she said. “We have a few questions. Who the hell is this asshole? Where was the video shot? Who did the enhancement? And who the hell are you? In reverse order.”
Initially, Detective Gutierrez took the same position Larry Marsh had—that civilian involvement was a no-no. As far as she was concerned, Athena should never have entered Masters’s office because it was far too dangerous, and she and Detective Edwards alone should be the ones to interview Crystal and her family.
“Look,” Ali said. “You wouldn’t have a clue about any of this if it weren’t for us. I’ve been through a hell of a lot with Crystal Holman in the last few days, and I think I have some credibility with her. And with Roxie, too,” she added.
“You know the mother?” Gutierrez asked.
“She came to see me in Sedona just yesterday afternoon,” Ali said, choosing to edit out the exact nature of that visit.
The detective turned to her partner. “What do you think, Frank?”
Edwards shook his head. “With kids it can go either way,” he said.
“Chris and Athena don’t have to go,” Ali added, “but if you don’t take me, I’m prepared to show up on my own—with or without your permission.”
The detectives finally rel
ented. They drove in a two-car caravan with the two officers leading the way. When they arrived at the Jackpot Dune’s Mobile Home Park in North Las Vegas, the place was every bit as desolate, grim, and uninviting as Ali expected. It reminded Ali of that old Roger Miller song lyric, “No phone, no pool, no pets.” She was surprised they even allowed children. No wonder Crystal hated it.
While Chris and Athena stayed in the car, Detective Gutierrez led the way up the obviously new wooden steps and knocked on the mobile home’s metal door. When Roxanne Whitman opened it, though, she ignored the police officers and looked straight at Ali.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Has something happened to Dave?”
“It’s about Crystal,” Ali said. “We need to talk to her.”
“She’s in the shower, but tell me. What’s wrong?”
A tall man appeared beyond Roxanne’s shoulder just as Detective Gutierrez held up her badge. “What is it, Roxie? What’s going on? Why are the cops here?”
“Do you mind if we come in?” Detective Gutierrez asked.
Shrugging, Roxie and Gary Whitman stepped aside and let the two cops and Ali enter their small but spotless living room.
“You still haven’t said what this is about,” Gary said, once they were all seated.
“Do you happen to know someone named Richard Masters?”
“Of course, I know Pastor Masters,” Gary Whitman said, answering for both of them. “He’s the youth minister at our church. He’s a great guy, and great with kids.”
“Has Crystal had any interactions with him?” Detective Gutierrez asked.
“Yes,” Gary said. “Definitely. When she started having difficulties at school, we sent her to him for counseling.”
“And did the counseling sessions seem to help?”
“Well, no,” Gary admitted. “Not really. Things have been getting worse instead of better. But she’s a teenager. You know how they can be.”
“Did she indicate whether or not she was happy with the sessions?”